kiara

"All skills grow!"

The Audience Agency sat down with Kiara who is one of Stage Direction’s most engaged participants. Kiara was involved in their primary school before and after the pandemic, 2 summer camp activities including design and fabrication sessions as well as attending legacy activity in her secondary school who were a Stage Directions school in year 1 of the programme.

Her first moment of engagement was watching A Monster Calls at The Lowry with her class in Year 5 when the first theatre trips were offered pre pandemic in 2019. She recalls that she hadn’t been to the theatre in many years and it felt like ‘a big thing’.

We wanted to understand how Kiara felt she had developed through Stage Directions both in Creative Habits of Mind (Persistence, Imagination, Inquistiveness, Discipline & Collaboration), and self expression.

“You can express yourself without other people pushing you down! You feel free when you're on the stage. And also, the thrill of it as well… I've definitely learned things, it's helped me gain more confidence! I've always had quite a bit of confidence. But it's just grew over the years… It’s also fun to do!”

Was there anything you learned about asking questions and solving creative problems?
“Yeah, that will always happen when you do something creative. You'll find solutions to other things, rather than complain!”

Do you have any examples?
“We would ask questions all the time and you have to throw yourself in it head first. Because if you just test [theatre styles],  that's not really getting into it. You need to go at it to get the whole experience! And then you can decide whether or not you like it. Like we did the beatboxing. We asked questions on what this meant, then you also have to listen to each other. Get all the ideas and solve creative problems. Everybody wanted something different. So you just worked at it all together!”

Did any skills specifically surprise you or change through doing Stage Directions?
“Because, personally, I don't really like working with other people, I like to do it on my own. But then, if you know the people, and you're actually comfortable around (which you can get to if you work with them constantly) then it starts to become fun to actually work with them, and then create all these scripts AND all these ideas… Yeah I like teamwork.”

What about any specific performance-related skills?
“Yeah, I've learned spacing, audience awareness, how to actually make a performance look good. I've learned how to make a performance from an idea all the way up to this massive thing that we've shown.”
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Kiara now attends regular sessions at The Lowry and is familiar with the staff in the learning department, she has an aspiration to do a job similar to that team or be an actor or artist. Kiara noted the consistent support she has had from her parents and family- she noted that it wouldn’t have been as possible to engage without them!

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